


King's Landing

by Stark_Knight



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, but other than that everything post-DWD is my own invention, daenerys destroys KL and sansa destroys littlefinger, dorne gets independence from the 7K and arianne is queen, myrcella survives, queen in the north!!, this is mostly book canon but i lifted some things i like about the last season
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:20:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21892795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stark_Knight/pseuds/Stark_Knight
Summary: There are memories for them here, in the bustling capital that still stands, defiant against famine and invasion and even dragonfire. They are not good memories. Memories of riot and fire, long captivity and shameful service. Yet still they both cherish these memories, these stolen moments of sweetness and something beautiful awakening amidst the pain and despair.This is the epic love story of Sansa Stark and Sandor Clegane, and about the life-changing events that transpired for both of them in King's Landing.
Relationships: Sandor Clegane/Sansa Stark
Comments: 13
Kudos: 49





	King's Landing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maracuya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maracuya/gifts).



> This story was written for the prolific and brilliant maracuya (thedropletsparkled on Tumblr) as part of the Sansan Secret Santa 2019 gift exchange. I hope you like it!

*****

There are memories for them here, in the bustling capital that still stands, defiant against famine and invasion and even dragonfire. They are not good memories. Memories of riot and fire, long captivity and shameful service. Yet still they both cherish these memories, these stolen moments of sweetness and something beautiful awakening amidst the pain and despair.

They did not know, then, how important those meetings would be, how lasting and real the love between them. How could they have known? For Sansa Stark and Sandor—the Queen in the North and her faithful consort—those days seem like shadows now, shades of different people who have long since passed away. Two people who were little more than caged animals, howling to be free.

For Sansa Stark, King’s Landing is like a dream of beauty, a song of fair maidens and noble knights. But too soon, the dream becomes a nightmare and she is trapped, a captive of the cruel King Joffrey, with no way out.

His guardsman, Sandor Clegane, seems to stalk beside Sansa like a faithful hound. When the starving mob attempts to carry Sansa off, it is Clegane who finds her and carries her to safety. Whenever she is in the darkest depths of despair, he appears. There is a bond between them, but Sansa does not realize this until the night of wildfire, when he comes to her room and asks her to leave with him.

‘I could keep you safe,’ he promises, and part of her wants to accept this promise. But she turns him away in the turmoil of her mind, and he flees far away from this place, from the years of dishonourable service and the bitter duty to his king.

Sansa keeps this memory as the night of her first kiss, still not understanding.

She is married for the first time, against her will, becoming a prisoner twice over. There is no love in this union, and she knows that there never will be.

She remains in the city, a caged bird, until she is carried off by a darker schemer. The name of Sansa Stark must be left behind, and she passes into Petyr Baelish’s power, re-shaping her identity to fit around him.

Sandor runs and runs until he can run no further. Until he is dying, bleeding out against a tree in the godforsaken ruins of war, and there is no friend who will even help him to a quicker death.

He curses the Stark she-wolf, curses the gods, curses the king, but most of all, he curses himself. ‘You should have taken her,’ he tells himself, over and over again, as he lies in high fever with his life’s force burning away. Better he should have taken her from that tower against her will, than that she had remained to become the property of that sneering dwarf. Better tied to him than to a Lannister.

And now they say she has killed the king, and they will surely find her and kill her. Cersei will have her burn for this. He twists in agony, remembering his own encounter with the fires of torment.

Better he should have taken her. Better he should have made her his…

Sandor barely remembers what comes after. Someone visits him in his agony, an old man with healing hands, and he confesses everything, knowing that he is about to die.

But when he awakes, there is a pleasant breeze around him and birdsong in a tree somewhere close, and his leg is in agony. It is neither the peace of the gods nor the torment of the seven hells; he is still on earth.

He is still here, but the Hound has passed away. In his place arises the Gravedigger, who does not speak and who buries the victims of war, laying them down to peace. Sandor Clegane rests.

Sansa is married for the second time, to a man no more of her choosing than the first. On her wedding day, when she emerges with her hair shining copper-red in the winter sun and Eddard Stark’s grey direwolf sewn onto her maiden’s cloak, her new husband kneels before her in the mountain snow and pledges to win her home back, to take Winterfell in his wife’s name and make her a queen.

For a moment, she dares to hope, but months pass in the Vale of Arryn, and the knights do not march. Winter storms sweep over the high mountains, blocking the passes to the north. They could march down the southern passes to the kingsroad, but men speak of even worse storms raging north of the riverlands, with drifts of snow twice man-height burying the kingsroad from sight.

The winds howl in the night as though hundreds of wolves have surrounded the valley. Men speak of the storm in hushed voices, and even the oldest granthers admit that they have never seen its like, not even in the depths of any previous winter. A wolf winter, they call it, and shudder over their cups.

‘But we are safe in the Vale,’ they always end such talk. Their food stores are plentiful. None in the Vale of Arryn will starve, this winter. Not like the riverlands, where the war has laid waste to every harvest and holdfast. Not like the north, where war still rages in the winter snow.

No news escapes from the north now. Stannis Baratheon has gone to fight the Bastard of Bolton, the last raven from the north brought that news months ago, but none in the south know what the outcome of that battle might be. Petyr must have fitted this news into his scheme to crown her somewhere, Sansa knows, but he does not share such scheming with her.

The winds blow cold, but Sansa’s marriage is even colder. She shares very few of her husband’s delights, and everywhere she walks, Petyr Baelish’s eyes follow her, burning with a hunger she does not understand. To get away from them both, she takes over the care of her little cousin, Robert. His fits have grown less frequent, but he is lethargic and seems very ill, although the maester cannot say for certain what ails him. Men speak of him as though he has already died, as if her husband Harry the Heir is already Harry the Lord.

Sometimes Sansa dreams of a different place, a different kind of life. It is quiet all around her, a silence she never gets to experience now, what with Harry’s boasting and his knights’ feasting and Sweetrobin’s cries which grow fainter every day. Only a light frosting of snow is seen here, on this island of calm, and the cold winds blow gently across the wide river and the saltpans beyond. She does not speak, but digs quiet graves for the victims of war and famine.

Somehow, these dreams remind her of Sandor Clegane, though she knows he must be long dead by now, a shadow that lingers with her as do the ghosts of her dead family. She stalks the walls of the castle by night, and one evening she catches sight of a silhouette against the snow outside, a tall armoured man with a burned face. But he is gone in the blink of an eye, and it is only a shadow made by the guttering of a candle-wick in its lamp-holder after all.

‘A dog can smell a lie,’ he told her, when it was still summer, in a different place. It is as if he growls at her once again, in this bleak castle cradled in the snows of winter. ‘All of them are liars, but most especially Littlefinger. You know the truth. You have only to discover it for yourself.’

It is as though illusion has finally been stripped from her eyes, and she sees clearly. She knows that Petyr is no true benefactor, that he would dispose of her as easily as he did of her aunt Lysa if she ever betrays him. She knows that he is poisoning Lysa’s son, the rightful lord of the Vale.

It is the better part of a year before Sansa can gather the evidence she needs to expose him. A year of waiting, keeping her cousin from Petyr’s clutches, of enduring his presence around her. Myranda Royce finds her out, and for a moment Sansa thinks all is lost, but Myranda decides to help her. Together, they find the evidence they need, and bring it to Sansa’s husband. Finally, Littlefinger is caught in the snare of his own schemes.

On the day of Baelish’s execution, the winds are still. When his blood paints the winter snow, a wolf howls, somewhere up the mountain peak. They leave his body for the wolves.

But just as Sansa savours relief, as one of her many cages melts away, a raven arrives from King’s Landing with news that changes everything.

It is a letter from Aegon, the son of Rhaegar Targaryen, who should have died years before Sansa was even born. He is not dead, his letter claims. He has returned to Westeros, his rightful kingdom, and he has taken King’s Landing from Cersei Lannister. He sits the Iron Throne, and he demands that lords from all corners of the realm come to King’s Landing to do him homage.

‘We must go, and kneel before him,’ Sansa’s husband insists. ‘You must send me,’ he tells little Lord Robert. ‘Me and my wife both. I am your heir, and she is the rightful ruler of the North. If we do him homage, Aegon will lend his support when it is time to take back Winterfell.’

The other lords of the Vale add their voices to his, and Robert’s regents approve, so within a fortnight, despite the misgivings that knit in her stomach like snakes, Sansa takes ship with her husband from Gulltown to King’s Landing.

The news of the dragon king’s sudden accession is heard across all Westeros, even on the quiet island of the monks on the wide river. For days a debate rages within the Elder Brother’s quarters, but finally it is decided that a small group of them will travel to King’s Landing to see the new dragon king for themselves, and witness his coronation.

‘You will go too,’ the Elder Brother tells Sandor, ‘and be released from your vow of silence. It is time you got a sense of what else it is we monks do in the world beyond this islet. Perhaps after, you will be ready to take your vows and become one of us.’

He nods his acquiescence. There are no enemies for him in King’s Landing now, only ghosts and regrets. The Lannisters have fallen.

Sansa’s sense of foreboding does not ease when they approach the city. There is no harbour for them to disembark, only its remains, and they finally come ashore in a small rowing-boat. Parts of the city wall, she notices, have collapsed, and are being rebuilt with a surprising amount of haste. No such haste is shown in rebuilding the burned hovels just inside the gates. There are soldiers everywhere, displaying the dragon standard of the Targaryens alongside a golden banner.

‘What happened here?’ Sansa wonders aloud, as they make their way through streets littered with bones and begging children.

‘Word is,’ one of her knights replies, ‘that the Lannister woman turned on the city at the end. When she saw there was no escape, she sent her men out into the streets, to loot and rape as they would.’

Sansa shakes her head. ‘No. There is more than that. It feels wrong. It feels like—like it felt in those months when we were waiting for Stannis Baratheon to arrive. It feels like the worst is still to come.’

Her husband scoffs. ‘You have a woman’s heart, and you are fearful,’ he says. ‘A king must always look to his defences foremost.’

‘Before the needs of his people?’ Sansa asks, but Harry has spotted another column of knights up ahead, and is not listening.

The Red Keep is full, according to the hurried word they have with a worn-out serving-man, and so they must find shelter at one of the inns which is still standing. Sansa is secretly grateful to not be sleeping in Joffrey’s castle again, but she cannot help but notice that they are the only nobles lodging there. ‘Surely we cannot be the only ones who have arrived to do the king homage,’ she tells Harry later. ‘Surely the streets should be full of lords with their trains, and the king should not be shut up in his castle, refusing to see us. Is the war not won? Did Aegon not summon us here to witness his triumph?’

As usual, Harry will not listen to her. ‘I am going out,’ he announces, ‘to seek better cheer.’ She pulls back from him, determined not to show any hurt, but they are interrupted by a knock at the door.

It is one of their knights, and his face is grim. ‘I am sorry to disturb you, my lord and lady,’ he says, ‘but you will want to hear this.’

‘We must go,’ Sansa insists, after the knight has left the room. The shock of his news has hit her like a fist in the stomach, the breath knocked out of her, but she knows she _must_ convince her husband. ‘We must leave the city before dawn, before they notice that we have gone. We can ride for Duskendale and take ship there. Please, my lord husband. Please.’

She has put aside enough of her dignity to beg, but still he will not heed her. ‘What threat is this Daenerys?’ he scoffs. ‘She will not dare to fight the rightful heir to her own family’s crown.’

‘She does not believe that this new king is Aegon,’ Sansa argues. ‘She believes he is an impostor, as he well may be. And she has _three dragons_! There can be no doubt of her own legitimacy.’

‘If these dragons are even real.’

‘They have been sighted.’ It is like arguing with a brick wall. ‘Where are the lords of Westeros, Harry? They are not here. They have declared for Daenerys, or they have decided to stay out of the affray, as we should too! Please, let us go back to the Vale.’

He turns as he walks out of the door. ‘No.’

The plaza before the Sept of Baelor is almost deserted. An icy wind creeps through the gravedigger’s rough brown robes and under his drawn-up hood. They have gathered here with the begging brothers today, as is their wont, but today their mission is to convince as many as they may to leave the city with them.

They have seen enough to convince them that the war for Westeros is not over. The smell of battle lingers in the air, and the unspoken name of Daenerys Stormborn haunts the city. Some of the more defiant brothers have taken to preaching her name, decrying the destruction that the supposed Aegon brought down upon the city when he took it. ‘He is no true Targaryen, this Aegon the Dragonless,’ they cry, ‘and he is no saviour. Look to the sky for your salvation! Look to the dragon queen!’

No matter the truth or lie of these words, the gravedigger and his fellow monks are all of one mind as to what they should do. Leave King’s Landing now, while there is still time. Before the dragons dance.

The gravedigger looks to the great marble statue of Baelor, towering over all with the magnificent sept behind it. There is a lady climbing the steps, dressed and cloaked in shades of blue that make him think of the river. A gust of wind blows down the steps, and the hood of her cloak drops back, releasing a fall of long russet hair.

His breath catches in his throat, and the brother nearest him looks up. ‘Sandor?’

‘I—I’ll be back,’ Sandor mutters. After his long silence on the isle, sometimes he now finds it hard to speak without forethought. He strides up the steps, where the lady has reached the entrance of the sept, and gone inside.

It is quiet inside, muffled voices echoing softly off the marble, and Sandor berates himself for a fool. She is not the only woman in the world with auburn hair. She is far away, perhaps dead, perhaps across the narrow sea. She will never return to him.

He turns towards the eastern side of the sept, and sees a blue-clad figure kneeling before the Mother’s alcove. Softly his footsteps draw nearer, the cloth soles of his monk’s boots making no sound. She raises her head to pray, and he stops in his tracks, almost falling to his own knees in reverence.

Though it has been more than three years since their parting, there can be no doubt in his mind. She was a pretty girl, but now she is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, with her cheeks flushed red by the wind and her long hair streaming down her back like autumn leaves. But it is not her beauty which leaves him stricken; it is the sadness in her faces as she prays, and the way her lips silently frame the same song she sang in the night of fire and madness.

He hesitates a moment more, and then resolves that he should go. Who is he, to disturb her prayer, to imagine that she might have spared a thought for him these three years? It is enough to know that she is alive. With that knowledge, perhaps one of his burdens can be lifted.

But just as he has made up his mind to turn and go, she whips around as if he has touched her on the shoulder. Her blue eyes are wide in shock, and she fixes him in her gaze as if afraid he might disappear.

‘Sandor,’ she whispers, and the echo falls lightly on the marble.

‘Little bird,’ he rasps without thinking.

She gapes at him a moment, and then smiles tremulously. ‘I was that,’ she says softly, drawing closer to him. She shakes her head. ‘But I will not call you the Hound.’

From the moment she sees him, Sansa cannot trust her eyes to tell her that he is real. She keeps her gaze locked on him, and she moves closer towards him until she clasps his arm, making sure that he will not disappear into shadow and leave her alone again. Then she releases him and steps back, remembering that she is a married woman, and her cheeks heat with the thought of all that has gone between them.

‘You are a monk?’ she asks, not knowing what to say to him.

He shakes his head. ‘I have taken no vows yet.’

‘Yet?’ she repeats, sounding like a little girl in her own ears again.

‘It is a very long story,’ he says. One side of his mouth quirks up in a smile. ‘So Cersei’s hunters did not find you.’

‘Nor you.’ She looks down, and twists her hands together. ‘I always hoped—after that last night when you—after we kissed—’

‘Kissed?’ he repeats incredulously, his voice sounding back at them from the marble pillars.

Sansa can feel her cheeks turning bright red. ‘No,’ she reminds herself, ‘he never kissed me after all. That was something I dreamed. He is rightly angry at me now. I should never have said that. I let it slip from my mouth without thinking.’

‘I—I must go,’ she stammers, and starts forward.

Sandor’s face is a mask of confusion. He makes as if to grab her, but then checks himself. ‘Where must you go?’

‘To my husband,’ she replies indistinctly, and flees the sept.

The encounter stays with him, eating at him, throwing his mind into turmoil. Something stirs below the tranquil surface of the Gravedigger. Not the Hound—the Hound is dead—but perhaps, this time, himself. Perhaps Sandor Clegane has awoken at last.

He loves her. That is what he would never admit, not before, not when he was deep in denial about the idea that the world could ever show him kindness or beauty.

If only she had not run!

He should have been softer, gentler, less threatening. But what is there to do? She is married to yet another high lord, as he had always known she would be, and he is returning to the Quiet Isle to make a lifelong vow—

If she had shown him any favour, given him the slightest indication that she wanted him by her side, then nothing could have kept him from her. He would fight a thousand men, were she waiting at the end of it all.

It is past midday, and still the monks are rounding up those who wish to leave the city. The sky grows heavy and seems to sink over the city, turning the light grey. It will snow again. The wind which snakes around the city walls has ice in its teeth.

A horn sounds out over the city, quivering away to die in the wind, leaving a hushed silence in its wake before the confusion begins.

‘Why did the horn sound? Is there an army coming? Is Daenerys coming? Will we be safe?’

Another horn sounds, and the city bells begin to ring. The streets are suddenly brought to life, as men of the Golden Company march to the walls. Sandor’s mouth is suddenly dry. It is nothing like the prelude to the Battle of the Blackwater; there is no enemy at the gates, no rioting in the streets, no ships clashing in the bay. So why does he feel as if something worse yet is to come?

Suddenly someone shouts. ‘There! Look up! Look to the sky!’

He looks to the sky, and his breath leaves him. Beneath the heavy snow-clouds, a black shadow swoops unmistakably over the city, its wings outstretched, its long neck held forward as it banks and swirls. As the city watches, holding its breath, two smaller shadows follow behind.

The dragons have come to King’s Landing.

There is a moment of calm, of anticipation, when Sandor almost believes that the dragons will fly peacefully and bring only wonder. But then the great black beast dips and circles in the sky, banking so that all can see his scaled bulk and the silver-haired woman who guides him, and a stream of fire flows from his jaws to the city walls below.

The other two dragons, the lesser shadows, begin to flame too, and chaos erupts. The houses abutting the sept are on fire. Sandor loses the other monks, and shrinks into the shadows of the sept. It has happened too fast for him to think, to have any thought in his head except to hide from the searing flames.

The flames burn brightest in the direction Sansa ran in, and his thoughts take a different turn.

‘Sansa!’ He is suddenly in the street, ducking from the flames, running the way she went without knowing where she is. Last time, he ran from the fire. Last time, he left her behind. It cannot happen again.

He runs without direction, not knowing where to go; fear drives him as much as his need to find her.

Above the fear, overriding the panic, something else calls to him. Another’s fear. The world seems to tilt sharply around him. He is trapped in a burning building, trying to unjam a door too heavy for him. He is coughing as smoke reaches his lungs. All around him, the knights of the Vale lie burned and dead.

‘Sandor!’ her terrified voice rings in his ears, and suddenly he knows the direction to go.

He does not stop to wonder at this strange bond, how he sees with her eyes and feels her fear deep in his chest. All he knows is that he must rein in his own fear in order to keep moving forward. If he stops to consider the fire, stops to hear the people screaming, he will die. Worse, _she_ will die too.

He stumbles across an abandoned barrel of water, and stops to tear off part of his hood, dipping it in the water, before moving on. She is close. He runs down another burning street. Furnace winds buffet him from all sides, but he makes unerringly for a tall building that must be an inn.

The flames roar like the screams of the damned down in hell, and there is a clash of swords up ahead near the city wall, but he can still hear her voice, fainter now, whispering his name.

Half the inn’s roof has collapsed, and a beam has fallen down to obstruct the front door. He winds the wet cloth around his face. Most of the inn is ablaze already, and there is not much time. The heavy beam is hot, and he winds the sleeves of his robe around his hands. Anchoring himself against the wall, he pushes with all his might. He can feel her fear changing to hope, as she realizes he is there.

The beam barely moves a foot, but it is enough. She fights her way out through the gap in the door, as he pulls it open as far as he can, out of the smoke and the ash and the waking nightmare, to fall into his arms.

‘You’re safe, little bird,’ he repeats, over and over again, as she clings to him and coughs.

She looks up at him, her face streaked with tears and soot. ‘I knew you would come for me.’

He doesn’t know who reaches out first, if it’s the part of him in her or her in him, but their lips meet as the world burns, and they cling to each other in the midst of the madness.

‘If we die anyway,’ she whispers, ‘at least now you know. You know how much I love you.’

Something in him turns to steel. ‘We won’t die,’ he says resolutely. ‘I know a secret way.’

From across the river, they watch the dragons consume the city.

They move like fugitives, avoiding the battle that still rages on the walls and in the woods. By the river, they come across another fugitive from the battle: a grey mare, miraculously uninjured.

‘We can take refuge with the monks of the Faith,’ Sandor says as he helps her mount. ‘If we can make it to the Trident, all will be well.’

‘No,’ she says, and he looks up at her in surprise.

‘I forgot,’ he growls. ‘You are a lady of the Vale now. You will return to your husband.’

‘I saw my husband die in the fire,’ she replies, ‘and I am not of the Vale.’ Snowflakes begin to fall from the laden sky, settling in her hair, and Sansa looks out into the forest. ‘We go north.’

He says nothing as he begins to lead the mare up the riverbank, but Sansa can see a crooked smile spread over his face. It is then that she knows she will wed again, and this time, it will be different. This time, she will choose her mate. She will take a man gentle and strong, a man who has braved his worst fear to win through to her side.

The road is hard and the snows lie thick upon the riverlands, but unexpected fortune comes to the pair as they make their way north. They run across an elderly outlaw who turns out to be Sansa’s great-uncle, Brynden Tully. He brings them into the midst of the swamps, to Greywater Watch, where Robb’s still-loyal bannermen are plotting with Howland Reed to win back the North. With Sansa in tow, their plans are finally set in action, and they sail north to find Sansa’s baseborn brother Jon, the last remaining member of her family.

Once the war is won, Jon is proclaimed the new King in the North, and Sansa returns at last to Winterfell. But the castle is changed, as is Jon. The kind half-brother she once knew has grown cold, a hard man given to fits of deep melancholy. The halls of Winterfell are cold too, and the servants she knew from her childhood are all gone. Every corner and every room remind her too sharply of the family she has lost. She cannot grieve for them yet, for there is another war to prepare for. Winter has come, as Father always warned it would, and the army of ice marches south, even more dread and terrible than the beasts of fire.

When Sansa wakes one morning to see the shape of a young girl with brown hair and grey eyes standing over her bed, she imagines that it is the ghost of her lost sister come with the army of the dead, and she screams. But then the ghost throws its arms around her, and both the Stark sisters are laughing through their tears when her guardsman rushes in to find out why she screamed.

The fortunes of the Starks continue to rise. Jon makes an alliance with the dragon queen who now rules in the south, and she brings her dragons north to help fight the army of the dead. Sansa cannot help but be wary of her, thinking of King’s Landing every time the dragons swoop in the sky, but Jon seems to come back to himself in her presence, bestowing on her most of his all-too-rare-now smiles.

And as the snows steadily fall deeper and reports from the Wall become more dire, a Skagosi army marches south to Winterfell, pledging to defend the castle should the army of the dead win through the Wall.

Sansa is at the gates on the day they arrive. Their leader is a boy mounted on a great shaggy sort of goat, wrapped and hooded in sheepskin. When he draws back his hood to reveal his auburn hair in the winter sun, the onlookers gasp and whisper that King Robb has come again. But Sansa knows better: it is her little brother Rickon, long presumed dead, and she laughs as she embraces him even as she weeps for Robb. When they wheel Bran forward on a rough cart, revealing that none of her younger siblings died after all, she feels as though her heart will burst with bittersweet emotion.

Throughout all this, Sandor remains by her side, pledging himself to House Stark, becoming her personal guard. He will never march to war on his injured leg again, but he oversees the defences of Winterfell. He eats together with the Starks, talks with them, laughs with them. If they can survive the winter, Sansa knows, they might find healing and happiness together.

Unexpectedly, she comes face-to-face with her first husband, who arrives in the north along with Daenerys’s train as her councillor. In Winterfell, he agrees to annul their marriage, to make it as if it never was. ‘I am not sorry,’ he quips at her, the day the septon of Winterfell stands witness to the annulment. ‘Your husbands tend to meet with the worst misfortunes.’

‘Only those who dare wed me against my will,’ she shoots back, and to her surprise, he laughs.

‘Ah, but I see you are a she-wolf after all.’

The long night is upon them, and with the night come the dead. The fighters go in different directions to fight them, whilst Sansa and Sandor are left to defend Winterfell. Fires burn in the dark of day and night, and fighting rages on the walls. For seven days and nights the battle rages, and on the eighth day, the armies of dead withdraw. A strange light is seen in the north, and the defenders rest.

The war has been won, and soon a pale dawn breaks the long night, and scouts from Winterfell ride forth to find Jon and Daenerys. The dead have melted away, defeated by dragonfire, but the king and queen are nowhere to be found.

They will live forever in legend, but the men of the north must choose a new earthly king. One and all, Jon’s erstwhile lords bannermen proclaim one name. They will have none other than Sansa Stark, the Red Wolf, she who rode out of the southern snows to rally the north and take back her home, she who defended Winterfell through the long night, never failing in courage nor hope.

Sansa takes up the duty with a heavy heart, still mourning her brother. Winter still lies upon them, and her people need grain to survive. She arranges with her cousin, Lord Robert of the Vale, to ship food to the North via White Harbour. The years are hard, but they endure. And as the days grow longer and lighter, there is cause for celebration as the Queen in the North weds her loyal guardsman, a hero of the war.

A few moons after their wedding, a white raven is seen flapping about the turrets of Winterfell, and all rejoice at the coming of spring. But alongside the white raven, one of its smaller black cousins brings an altogether different message.

Sansa reads the message aloud to her husband and her assembled siblings. ‘I am writing directly to you, Queen Sansa, as one queen to another. I, Myrcella Baratheon, now rule in King’s Landing. We have weathered the winter, and I am summoning my leal vassals to the capital. You, however, are no vassal, but perhaps a trusted ally. I have recognized the independence of the kingdom of Dorne, where my good-sister Arianne now reigns as queen. I am prepared to recognize the independence of the north as well. I ask you to come to me, since I realize that an incursion to the north by myself might be taken as an unfriendly act. Come witness my coronation, and make alliance with the south and with Dorne. Perhaps the War of the Many Kings can finally be healed by the pact of the three queens.’

Spring moves faster in the south, and the road to King’s Landing is a pleasant one, with life coming back to the woods and moors, and early flowers braving the frost in the hedgerows. There are still some amongst Sansa’s cohorts who fear a trick from this new queen, but they all breathe easy when finally the two queens meet and promise an end to the enmity between their houses, and pledge each other assistance in restoring order and prosperity to their respective kingdoms.

It has been years since the day of dragonfire, and still longer since Myrcella’s father ruled here, when Sansa was only a girl. The Red Keep is all but destroyed, melted and cracked by dragonfire, and Myrcella rules from a new wooden keep built upon the remains of the Dragonpit. The Sept of Baelor is one of the few buildings that survives, looking across to Myrcella along the Street of the Sisters.

Sansa and Sandor quietly ride together, taking in the streets of the city rebuilt. The new houses and shops are built upon the ruins of the old, and a sense of hope prevails above all, a sense of enduring. There are ships in the bay, and merchants along the docks crying their wares as they did a decade ago. In the city, there are cakes and bread to be bought at the bakers’ once more, and the steady ring of hammers resounds in the Street of Steel.

They ride to the top of Aegon’s Hill, and take in the ruins. It is a lonely place, abandoned to the heather and the curlew, but new flowers have begun to grow over the ancient foundations already, and they can now see the sea past the collapsed towers, beyond the cliff.

Sansa dismounts, and takes Sandor’s hand. ‘Let me show you to the beach,’ she says with a hint of mischief.

They descend the rock-hewn steps where once she was led into the power of Petyr Baelish, and walk for a while along the sandy beach below. Foam-tipped breakers roll along the shore, and a cold spring wind blows their hair back into their faces. The beach is desolate and wild, populated only by the gulls who call as they skim the cliffs above.

‘When I first came here,’ Sansa says softly, ‘I could never have imagined what I might become.’

‘I always knew you were meant to be a queen,’ her husband growls.

‘A queen _consort_ ,’ she corrects him. ‘I would only ever have ruled through my husband.’

Sandor gives a snort of assent.

Did you ever imagine that for yourself?’ she teases him.

‘Bound to a she-wolf and pestered day and night by her and her wolfish siblings?’ He gives a bark of laughter and draws her to him. ‘Not even once.’

She giggles. ‘Well, this she-wolf has something to tell you.’ She takes his hands in hers, and contrives to look solemn. ‘There is another cub on the way.’

He does not say anything, but draws her close to him, planting the lightest of kisses on her forehead. ‘I will keep you both safe,’ she hears as he holds her close, but it is a promise so soft that she cannot tell whether it is spoken, or only a thought carried on the wind.

She reaches up to kiss him, overbalances, and the tension is broken as he catches her and they both start laughing. He puts his arm around her shoulders as they gaze out to the sea together, the clear skyline broken by an old shipwreck upon one of the rocky islands along the coast. She knows, without having to look, that he is smiling the crooked smile that never quite reaches the left side of his face, but which is reflected back in his dark, fiery eyes.

They have weathered the storm and found safe harbour together, and perhaps this new day will be a little warmer than the last. For whatever comes, the Starks will endure.

*****


End file.
